… “We looked at many many possibilities together and ultimately took this one with us buying all of Nokia’s phone business, becoming an innovation partner and customer of Here and licensing patents from Nokia.”

Much of the tough work, Ballmer said, was in negotiating an arrangement around the mapping business. That business is staying with Nokia, but Microsoft remains a key customer with the ability to do innovation work on top of Nokia’s platform.

“That was important to us because we think mapping is an absolutely critical service, as Nokia does, for the modern world,” he said.